The Business and Economics Portal

The time required to start a business is the number of calendar days needed to complete the procedures to legally operate a business. This chart is from 2017 statistics.
Small business vendors at a public market

Business is the practice of making one's living or making money by producing or buying and selling products (such as goods and services). It is also "any activity or enterprise entered into for profit."

A business entity is not necessarily separate from the owner and the creditors can hold the owner liable for debts the business has acquired except for limited liability company. The taxation system for businesses is different from that of the corporates. A business structure does not allow for corporate tax rates. The proprietor is personally taxed on all income from the business.

A distinction is made in law and public offices between the term business and a company (such as a corporation or cooperative). Colloquially, the terms are used interchangeably. (Full article...)

Economics (/ˌɛkəˈnɒmɪks, ˌkə-/) is a social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services.

Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of economic agents and how economies work. Microeconomics analyses what is viewed as the basic elements of economies, including individual agents and markets, their interactions, and the outcomes of those interactions. Individual agents may include households, firms, buyers, and sellers. Macroeconomics analyses economies as systems where production, distribution, consumption, savings, and investment expenditure interact; and the factors of production affecting them, such as: labour, capital, land, and enterprise, inflation, economic growth, and public policies that impact these elements. It also seeks to analyse and describe the global economy. (Full article...)

Selected article

The economy of the Iroquois (also known as Haudenosaunee) historically was based on communal production and combined elements of both horticulture and hunter-gatherer systems. The tribes of the Iroquois Confederacy and other Northern Iroquoian-speaking peoples, including the Huron, had their traditional territory in what is now New York State and the southern areas bordering the Great Lakes.

The Iroquois peoples were predominantly agricultural, harvesting the "Three Sisters" commonly grown by Native American groups: maize, beans, and squash. They developed certain cultural customs. Among these developments were ideas concerning the nature and management of property. The Iroquois developed a system very different from the now-dominant Western variety. This system was characterized by such components as common ownership of land, division of labor by gender, and trade mostly based on gift economy.

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A supermarket in North America.
Photo credit: Raysonho @ Open Grid Scheduler / Grid Engine

A supermarket, a large form of the traditional grocery store, is a self-service shop offering a wide variety of food and household products, organized into aisles. It is larger in size and has a wider selection than a traditional grocery store, but is smaller and more limited in the range of merchandise than a hypermarket or big-box market.

Selected economy

Karachi, the Economic Hub of Pakistan

Pakistan has a developing mixed economy with a prominent agriculture sector. It is the 40th-largest in terms of nominal GDP and the 20th-largest economy by purchasing power parity (PPP) as of 2026. In per capita terms, the Pakistani economic output ranks 160th by nominal GDP and 138th by PPP GDP. Economic development in Pakistan is varied with growth centers located along the Indus River. Major urban centers with diversified economies include Karachi and the broader Punjab region, including Faisalabad, Lahore, Sialkot, Rawalpindi, and Gujranwala. With a large population exceeding 250 million, the country has been sensitive to immigration, natural disasters, and regional armed conflict. (Full article...)

Selected quote

"Who provides the profits -- these nice little profits of 20, 100, 300, 1,500 and 1,800 per cent? We all pay them -- in taxation. We paid the bankers their profits when we bought Liberty Bonds at $100.00 and sold them back at $84 or $86 to the bankers. These bankers collected $100 plus. It was a simple manipulation. The bankers control the security marts. It was easy for them to depress the price of these bonds. Then all of us -- the people -- got frightened and sold the bonds at $84 or $86. The bankers bought them. Then these same bankers stimulated a boom and government bonds went to par -- and above. Then the bankers collected their profits.

But the soldier pays the biggest part of the bill.

If you don't believe this, visit the American cemeteries on the battlefields abroad. Or visit any of the veteran's hospitals in the United States. On a tour of the country, in the midst of which I am at the time of this writing, I have visited eighteen government hospitals for veterans. In them are a total of about 50,000 destroyed men -- men who were the pick of the nation eighteen years ago. The very able chief surgeon at the government hospital; at Milwaukee, where there are 3,800 of the living dead, told me that mortality among veterans is three times as great as among those who stayed at home.

Boys with a normal viewpoint were taken out of the fields and offices and factories and classrooms and put into the ranks. There they were remolded; they were made over; they were made to "about face"; to regard murder as the order of the day. They were put shoulder to shoulder and, through mass psychology, they were entirely changed. We used them for a couple of years and trained them to think nothing at all of killing or of being killed.

Then, suddenly, we discharged them and told them to make another "about face" ! This time they had to do their own readjustment, sans [without] mass psychology, sans officers' aid and advice and sans nation-wide propaganda. We didn't need them any more. So we scattered them about without any "three-minute" or "Liberty Loan" speeches or parades. Many, too many, of these fine young boys are eventually destroyed, mentally, because they could not make that final "about face" alone."

Smedley Butler, War Is a Racket, 1935

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On this day in business history

July 21:

General images

The following are images from various business-related articles on Wikipedia.

More did you know

William McChesney Martin, Jr.
  • ...that, according to historical legend, Laissez-faire stems from a meeting in about 1681 between the powerful French finance minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert and a group of French businessmen led by a certain M. Le Gendre?
  • ...that Antoine Augustin Cournot derived the first formula for the rule of supply and demand as a function of price and in fact was the first to draw supply and demand curves on a graph in his Researches on the Mathematical Principles of the Theory of Wealth?
  • ...that the Toyota Production System (TPS) developed by Toyota, that comprises its management philosophy and practices, organizes manufacturing and logistics for the automobile manufacturer, including interaction with suppliers and customers?

Business news

20 July 2026 – Canada–United States relations
U.S. president Donald Trump signs executive orders imposing 50% tariffs on many Canadian goods, including USMCA-covered products, citing discriminatory trade practices. The duties take effect in 30 days, with exemptions for energy, potash, and products under sector-specific tariffs. (AFP via Vanguard) (CBC News)
14 July 2026 – 2024–2026 Cuba blackouts, 2026 Cuban crisis
Cuba suffers its third nationwide blackout in less than 10 days and fifth of 2026, as the state utility reports a complete grid failure amid fuel shortages caused by the ongoing U.S. imposed blockade, that complicate power restoration. (AFP via RFI)
13 July 2026 –
Venezuelan acting president Delcy Rodríguez appoints U.S. envoy Félix Plasencia to a foreign relations and overseas trade post, replacing foreign minister Yván Gil, who becomes science and technology minister. (Reuters)
9 July 2026 – Aftermath of the September 11 attacks, Economy of New York City
The proposed 2 World Trade Center breaks ground in Lower Manhattan in New York City, New York, U.S., 25 years after the original building was destroyed during the September 11 attacks. (ABC News) (KTLO)
1 July 2026 – Economic consequences of the Russo-Ukrainian war
Ukraine approves a mechanism for exporting domestically produced weapons and military technologies to raise funds for its defense effort against Russia and attract foreign investment, while requiring that the Ukrainian military's supply needs remain the priority. (AFP via The Straits Times)
1 July 2026 – The Philippines and the World Bank
The World Bank classifies the Philippines as an upper-middle-income economy, up from lower-middle-income status, after its per capita gross national income exceeds the fiscal year 2026 threshold of US$4,496 to $13,935. (Agenzia Nova)

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